JeffRupert

Acting Director, Office of Wildland Fire

Acting Director, Office of Wildland Fire

Jeff Rupert is serving as the Acting Director of the Office of Wildland Fire at the Department of the Interior. “The Office of Wildland Fire (OWF) leads budget oversight and programmatic governance for the Department’s wildland fire program. Representing the Secretary of the Interior, OWF bridges the individual fire programs of the four land management bureaus as well as supporting the wildland fire needs of all the bureaus across the Department to create” a “Department-wide fire program.”

Jeff Rupert, in 1991, received “his bachelor’s degree in biology from Baker University,” and then joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “as a biological technician at the National Ecology Research Center (NERC) in Fort Collins, Colorado.” After receiving his master’s in biology from the University Texas-Pan American, in 1996 Rupert was “hired as refuge biologist at the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, along the border with Mexico. Two years later, he became the refuge’s manager.” Rupert, in 2006, “was named manager of Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.” In 2010, Rupert was named “Chief of the Division of Natural Resources and Conservation Planning.” Rupert has also “been an active member of the Interior Fire Executive Council for the last several years.”